Danced All Night
by vampirediva07
Summary: From the journal of Emma. The story of how she and Will became one and then some.
1. A Little Introduction

Dearest Readers,

First of all, I'd like to welcome you to my blog or journal if you prefer. This is going to be a learning experience for me as well as for my husband, Will, as he bares with me while I write this labor of love that is our story. It's a story that began many years ago and is continuing many years into the future, provided we are granted that future.

I am a person of particular precision and order, particularly because of my OCD. Things have to be put up a certain way, displayed in a certain manner, and particularly clean as well. In addition to my OCD, I also have mysophobia, which gives reason to my insane need for everything to be clean.

My particular fear of dirt and germs stems from an incident when I was a child. I remember it clearly because I was seven and so excited to go camping with my family. I was always a precocious and careful child, mostly because of my sheltered upbringing, but I wanted a little adventure to prove that I wasn't as fragile as everyone believed me to be. Needless to say, I wandered too far and wound up in a swamp before being sprayed by a skunk. It was awful and I couldn't forget the stench of it for weeks after. From that point on, I was never clean enough to forget that smell.

I am, by profession, a counselor. Certified and trained for many years in the art of dealing with human emotions. Every day I see young adults, teenagers, that come into my office confused about love and what it means to them. But never once did I consider it for myself. The most basic and yet, complex, of human emotions is the only one I ever truly feared. I lived my life eschewing away from relationships and love because I was afraid of the mess it would create. But all of that changed the day I met the man I now call my husband. Will Schuester was everything I shouldn't have wanted, but somehow was lucky enough to have.

For that, I am thankful and blessed.

I hope that as you journey through this with me that you'll grasp a deeper understanding of the meaning of love. Or perhaps find the courage to go out there and find the one that you love. Whatever you take away from this, may it be something to light your way in life in some way. For me, this is the story of my life and the beginning of my future with my husband.

Mrs. Emma Schuester

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A/N: I do not own anything from Glee, although I wish I did and could fix how Will and Emma are NOT together right now.**


	2. The Beginning

**A/N: I received a review that said this is ripped off from another story. I would like to clarify that it was not my intent. I did like the idea of a blog from Emma's view, so I'm doing it in a different way. I promise that I am in no way trying to copy your original idea with the alphabetical thing. I promise and apologize if I offended you! I simply loved the idea of a blog and since I blog myself, I thought an Emma one would be fun.**

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I guess I should start from the very beginning, as I like order. When I first moved to Lima, I didn't know a single soul. I really didn't. The only contact I'd had was with Principal Figgins through a series of e-mails and phone conversations that acquired my job as the guidance counselor for West McKinley High School. While I was very excited at the prospect of a job, I was also terrified of a whole new experience and a whole new place full of germs, dirt, and people I didn't know. It was like...the first day of middle school, to equate it to something you might relate to. Awkward, uncomfortable, and most of all terrifying for someone like me.

That first morning I spent nearly two hours getting ready out of nervousness and inability to decide what to wear on my first day of work. But I finally decided on something simple, yet very me. My black pencil skirt, light pink shirt with a bow on the collar, and a black pair of Mary Jane's. (Yes I remember exactly what outfit I wore...OCD remember?) After spending the time picking out my outfit, I curled my hair just so and finally headed out the door. I arrived at the school an hour earlier than I was expected, mostly so I could get my office and desk in order. I had a few things from home with me, including a lily my mother gave me as a going away gift. Lilies were always a favorite of mine because of their cleanliness. They are white and pure and since I don't have a pet, it serves the purpose of something to care for and look after.

After cleaning my new office twice and putting everything in order, including putting out my pencils to take notes with later, I was satisfied with how it looked. When I sat down and surveyed everything, I was surprised to see that I was given an office with no direct privacy, which to me was a little embarrassing since I like to have some privacy. Plus glass is ridiculously difficult to clean! (No joke...I spend at least thirty minutes of every day cleaning those stupid windows.) Aside from the windows and lack of privacy, the space I had was a quaint little space of my own. A little place where I could keep everything in its place and in order. That was just how I liked things and I could tell that this was the start of something new for me.

Later that morning, I went to my very first staff meeting...and that's when I saw him. Will Schuester. We were sitting across from one another at the meeting and while I kept to myself, mostly to avoid physical contact with anyone since I knew no one, I couldn't help but look up at him every once in a while. He was very attractive. In fact, he was the most attractive person I'd ever seen in my life...which is saying something considering I was approaching thirty when I took the job. I couldn't help but look at him with his curly blonde hair and gorgeous hazel eyes, but I averted my gaze every time he looked up. My attention was diverted momentarily when I was awkwardly introduced to the staff by Principal Figgins, but my attention went right back to Will afterward, albeit only stolen glances every once in a while. It wasn't until very late into the meeting that I noticed he was wearing a wedding ring and knew that all chances I had were nil.

The meeting dispersed for the school day as it would begin and I went back to my office to gather myself for the oncoming day, only to be greeted a few moments after I reached my desk by a voice behind me.

"You must be Emma Pillsbury," the voice said. I looked up to see the one person I really didn't expect.

"Oh, um...yes. Please call me Emma," I managed to pull myself together.

"I'm Will Schuester," he said, holding out his hand for me to shake. I looked at it awkwardly before shaking it slowly. "I teach Spanish here."

"It's really nice to meet you," I said softly, still taking note of his wedding ring. _He's a married man Emma...off limits._ I had to remind myself several times.

That initial meeting has stuck in my mind after all of these years. I still remember what he wore too...those dark wash jeans and his navy button down shirt with a red tie. It was sexy and attractive on him...even if it was casual. Years have passed since that day...almost five to be exact and I still know how lucky I am to have Will in my life, but the most important part is not the beginning or the end, but the journey to how we got from there to here.

But every story has a beginning, right?


	3. Forging Friendship

That first meeting and my first day at West McKinley would forever change the course of my life...even though I couldn't have known it then. During those first few months, Will and I developed a tentative friendship built around a friendly work atmosphere and his easy-going personality. Which, if we're honest, really contrasts my neurotic behavior and OCD tendencies. But our friendship was formed and I was thankful to have one ally in the sea of endless faces of students and faculty that I didn't really know. Will was kind to me and struck up conversations easily, which is rather hard for me to do considering most people don't really understand my odd and sometimes, awkward, behavior. But it never failed that we always had something to talk about.

I'll be the first to admit that during those first few months, I developed feelings for Will that were beyond that of friendship or being a collegue. It wasn't something that I planned or wanted to happen...it just sort of did. Part of me, at least the rational part, sees that it was a natural thing because Will was all the things I looked for in a mate. He was kind, compassionate, good looking (not that physical attraction is everything), and the man gave everything of himself before thinking once about his own needs. That was the man I had dreamed about since I was a teenage girl and at the age of thirty, I had found it. But, after years of living in perpetual fear of germs and my OCD problems, intimacy was not something I was proficient in. That, along with the fact that Will was married, kept my own emotions at bay while we continued to work together.

Things really began to change when Will took charge of the Glee club after the former director, the ever creepy Sandy Ryerson, was fired for inappropriate conduct. (I said good riddance. He was really weird and kind of gross...at least to me. And I'm the queen of weird!) But Will decided to take on the Glee club, which only consisted of five members then, and bring them back to the days where they won contests and were respected. I admired his candor and all out determination to bring the club back to glory, but at the same time I wondered if he could really do it. The only members beginning were Rachel Berry, Artie Abrams, Tina Cohen-Chang, Mercedes Jones, and Kurt Hummel. However, Will soon gave up on them because his wife Terri (whom I have a _strong_ dislike for and will explain more about in future posts) informed Will that she was pregnant. In order to support his growing family, Will considered quitting his teaching job to take on one as an accountant...something I knew he would not like.

I spent some time talking with him about this decision and all the while, the Glee kids...now joined by Finn Hudson, decided to keep trying without Will. After seeing them perform, Will renewed his faith in the club and decided to keep his job as a teacher, much to my relief. After those initial weeks of Glee revival, I noticed how much happier Will seemed when he was working with those kids as opposed to dealing with the stress of his marriage. Unknown to most people, Will took on a second job as a night janitor to earn extra money for the impeding start of his family. One particular night I remember was the night I realized he knew about my OCD and mysophobia. I was helping him clean up a classroom after hours so he wouldn't be by himself. I had been scrubbing along and chatting when he confronted me about my problem.

"Let's make a deal. You're helping me with my problem, how about I take a stab at one of yours?" he said, looking at me.

I was quick to defend myself with the first thing that came to mind. "Oh no, I don't have a problem."

But he saw right through me. "You've been scrubbing that pencil sharpener for an hour."

I had literally no defense to that. My mind immediately went into a frenzy when he swiped his finger on some chalk residue and brushed it on my nose, leaving it there for ten seconds solid. Every moment of that, I was freaking out inside...wanting to disinfect myself...clean it all away and make it so it never happened. But when he wiped it off my nose, it was like it hadn't happened. I forgot about the chalk. That was the moment I fell in love completely with Will Schuester. After that moment, we bonded and he understood that I wasn't like other people...I needed a little extra care.

During this time, Will and I spent a lot of time together, bonding over many things but especially music, as I was a fan of the Glee kids and their performances. I enjoyed this time and never wanted it to end since I was pretty much in love with him. However, realizing that he needed to focus on his upcoming family, I curtailed the time we spent together. I knew that it was wrong to love a married man, but I never acted on those feelings. Instead, I realized that Will had responsibilities and knew that he was a man of his word. And while Terri treated him horribly and made him feel like he was next to nothing and never good enough, I tried to keep him built up by reminding him that he was doing good for the Glee kids and setting a good example for his own future child. I did all that I could to be a supportive friend; because in my mind, that is all I was ever going to be.

Boy, was I wrong.

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A/N: Thank you for the reviews so far. I really appreciate the support. Please keep them coming!**


	4. First Kiss

The foundation of every relationship has to be built on three things. Love, trust, and honesty. Without these things, every relationship will fail. If you don't love someone, there is no point in being in that relationship. Loving someone means that you put them above yourself and they do the same. Trust is key in every part of life, but when you're with someone you have to trust that they won't hurt you and that they won't lie. If you cannot trust the one that you love, there are all kinds of problems. And honesty is a huge factor in trust. Without it, you have no trust and no trust means no relationship. No matter if this relationship is just friendship or something more, like dating or marriage.

Case in point? Will's first marriage.

Not that I am bashing what he had with Terri, because I am sure that at one point it was a wonderful relationship, but as the years went on...it became toxic. Terri didn't support Will's ideas and dreams the way a spouse should support their husband. Instead, she spent the vast majority of the time shooting his dreams down before he could really have a chance to take off with them. That isn't loving someone...that is controlling them. Terri spent the vast majority of her time controlling Will, using her pregnancy as leverage over him. Will felt so guilty spending his time doing what he loved when he had a pregnant wife at home, who was demanding of him in more than one way, so he sold himself short. It made me sick to see Will so pointedly used when he was only doing what he loved and trying to be a good husband and future father at the same time.

On my own side of things, I began a relationship with Ken Tanaka in order to get over Will and hide my feelings instead of letting them take me over. I'll be honest with you all and say that it was probably the most fake and unreal relationship I've ever been in because I didn't love Ken, I didn't trust him, and I wasn't honest with him from the start. Even though I am almost certain he knew that I wasn't in love with him, he was willing to play second fiddle rather than not being in the band at all. However, I just couldn't stop loving Will. Covering my own feelings even went so far as accepting a marriage proposal from Ken and planning an entire wedding that I never went through with. Ken was extremely jealous of my friendship with Will, knowing deep down that I could never love him the way I loved Will, so when I postponed our wedding to help Will with Glee when he couldn't go to a contest, Ken called the whole thing off.

During my whole engagement fiasco, Will finally learned the truth about Terri's pregnancy. The entire thing had been a ruse after she discovered she had actually had a hysterical pregnancy. Unable to tell Will for fear of losing him, she continued with a fake pregnancy to keep him. Will found out when he found the pregnancy pad she'd been using to fake her belly in one of her drawers. After Will learned this, he left Terri and asked for a divorce. He came to my wedding the same day, just after Ken had left me, and told me that he had just left his wife. I knew that neither of us needed to get into a relationship after just coming out of one. I told him I was leaving McKinley because I couldn't bare to work there with my feelings for him and seeing Ken everyday complicating things.

I packed my things and got ready to leave McKinley behind, thinking I could leave behind the memory of what had happened. As I grabbed my box of things and walked down the hall, I turned to find Will at the end. He ran toward me and my heart began racing. I could feel my cheeks darkening with uncertainty, since blood usually rushes to my porcelain face all too easily. He grabbed the box from my hands and put it on the ground. I wanted to say something, but he put his finger to my lips before giving me the first real kiss I'd ever experienced in my life. Not that I haven't kissed before, but this was the first one that I truly felt and was connected to. I still remember the green pea coat I was wearing and the grey sweater Will had on over his blue shirt. That moment is so ingrained into my mind that it's not something I can ever forget. I was in love with Will Schuester and didn't care who knew anymore.

Even as I write this now, I can see his sleeping form next to me in our bed and I know how lucky I am. He is my best friend, lover, husband, and father of my child. (Who will come up in later entries...) Will is the best thing that ever happened to me and there isn't a single part of my soul that regrets our life together, no matter how that may have come about. We have all three of the parts that make up a foundation of a relationship...love, trust, and honesty.

But it hasn't always been this easy for us...

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A/N: I appreciate all the support for this so far! Please continue to leave reviews!**


	5. Redefining Himself

In my previous post, I said that the foundation of every relationship was love, trust, and honesty. But an important sub-foundation to those things is knowing who you are as an individual before you enter into a relationship. If you don't know who you are single, how can you possibly be yourself when you're with someone else? You will start making the same mistakes you made before in previous relationships, like sacrificing who you are fundamentally to make the other person happy and in the end...it doesn't make anyone happy and you end up miserable.

My husband, bless his heart, is the living example of this.

After that initial kiss, a whole dam of things broke between Will and myself as we began a rocky relationship. We decided that it would be best if we went on a real date to get to know one another as the new people we were, unattached to anyone else and free to see each other for the first time without the guilt of Will being married or me dating Ken. He agreed to cook for me at his place, which I hadn't known he could do in the first place. That night went beautifully as we danced together to Neil Diamond's "Hello Again" in his living room, sharing soft kisses and an exchange of sweet words, even though I was still hesitant about kissing in the first place because of my problems. But I felt perfect and happy in his arms, like I had finally got my Prince Charming. For the first time in my thirty years of life, I felt wanted and desired, which is saying something for me.

Things got a little heated between us and I had to put a stop to it, admitting to him for the first time that I was a virgin. It was both humiliating and terrifying to admit that to him, but I couldn't let things go any further because I was scared. We agreed to take things a little slower, mostly for my sake, and watched a movie together instead. Several nights later, I was preparing dinner for Will when his ex-wife Terri showed up and informed me that "Hello Again" had been the song she and Will danced to at Prom their junior year of high school. I confronted Will about it and upon realizing that that was the truth, he apologized profusely, saying he had not realized it was the same and didn't hold the same meaning it once did for him.

Will hadn't been alone or by himself for fifteen years, spending all of that time with Terri. He needed to take the time to reintroduce himself to who he really was separate of that marriage and any relationship with someone else. I wanted Will to enjoy having that time to himself to be who he really was since Terri had stuffed that man away for so long. And my own issues were a lot to deal with too. Will didn't need to already be sacrificing himself for my crazy right off the bat in our relationship after dealing with his wife's controlling behavior for years. Deciding that Will needed to find himself again, we both put our relationship on hold so he could deal with his issues while I dealt with mine. I wanted to get better for him. Take control of my OCD and mysophobia before I could commit myself to him.

A while later, while the Glee kids were doing a Madonna inspired project, I received some wisdom from Sue Sylvester. She told me that I didn't deserve the power of Madonna because I didn't have control of my own body or sexuality, which I took to heart. Heeding the wisdom of Madonna, I decided in an impulsive action that I was going to take control of my body and lose my virginity to Will. When the time came for things to happen, I couldn't go through with it. Will commended me for taking control of my own body, even if I couldn't go through with the deed at the time. It's not to say that I didn't want to, because I did...more than anything I wanted to give myself to Will because I trusted him. I wanted him to be my first and only, even if that was old fashioned. The idea that he would be the only man to touch me in that way thrilled and excited me, but in the end I just wasn't ready yet.

Things came to an ugly head some time later, after Sue Sylvester took it upon herself to become my personal "therapist" of sorts. I didn't like this idea at all, but she didn't stop. She informed me that Will had not been faithful to me, having made out with The Vocal Adrenaline coach and slept with April Rhodes. I was both hurt and embarrassed because I had been seeing a real therapist for my OCD problems to get better so he and I could be together. Every dream I had ever had for he and I was literally blowing up right in front of me as I heard the words coming from Sue's mouth. I wanted to cry and lock myself in a closet for a very long time until I could forget Will Schuester, but Sue suggested I confront Will about it in a public place. I did and it didn't end very well, which strained the relationship we had begun to build. He attempted to apologize later and I told him that it wasn't a good idea for the time being to speak to one another.

Neither of us knew the hell we were about to go through then.

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A/N: Thank you so much for all the positive reviews! I hope this continues to be up to par for you guys. Leave me reviews please!**


	6. Only Break Your Heart

After finding out that Will had made out with Shelby Corcoran and that April Rhodes had slept over, that was the last straw for me. There was so much hurt and betrayal there and I honestly had never felt so alone before. I really did not know what to do...so I simply put things in a box and let it go on without being properly dealt with. I didn't want to face anything really. I wanted to curl up in a little sterile bubble and never go out into the world again. Will had broken my heart and I felt humiliated because I had been trying to get better so that we could be together. I thought that he had been holding up his side of things by working out his own issues, but I had been wrong. It wasn't until later that I learned that he had never slept with April, but he had still made out with Shelby. That still stung to know that Will had turned to another woman to comfort him instead of me. I knew that I wouldn't have necessarily made out with him because that idea still scared me to some degree, but I would have been there for him.

In some attempt to get over Will, I started dating my dentist Carl Howell. This would turn out to be both a good and bad decision on my part, but I'll get to that later.

Around this time, the Glee kids were getting ready to go to Regionals and Will came to me for advice and guidance when he found out that Sue was attempting to sabotage the kids. Without a win at Regionals, Principal Figgins was going to disband the group and the kids were all going to be left without a place where they felt accepted. When Will came to me, I had to tell him that I was dating someone, which broke my heart to do because I was still in love with him. I loved Will more than I've ever loved another human being in the history of the world. But I gave him what advice I could give and wished him luck with the Glee kids at their performance. I knew that this was everything to him. Glee was all he had since his marriage was over, his relationship with me hadn't worked out, and everything he had known for over ten years in his life was different now. Will needed Glee club just as much as those kids did.

Regionals didn't pan out as everyone hoped, with the two other groups placing over New Directions. I knew that Principal Figgins was still intent on disbanding the group, so I went to him in a fury and yelled at my boss for the first time in my life. I was fighting for those kids, but at the same time I was fighting for Will too. I knew what that group meant to him and how much he loved working with them. Principal Figgins was insistent though and the group would remained disbanded because they didn't place at Regionals. Will accepts this loss, however, and we walked out of Figgins' office. Outside of Figgins' office, Will finally said the words I had longed to hear him say from the moment I first met him, but never thought I would hear.

"I love you Emma. There, I finally said it."

Those words really hit me square in the heart as he pulled me in and kissed me. It was one of those moments that truly defined someone. I knew that Will loved me. The confession and confirmation of what I'd longed to know for months was finally there in front of me. Left standing there in the hallway, I absorbed everything that had just happened with terror and confusion, so I did the only logical thing I could do...I ran. I was so scared of that confession that I avoided Will. The entire summer I spent avoiding him and spending time with my boyfriend Carl. It wasn't easy not talking to Will for almost three months solid, but I did it as an attempt to get over my feelings for him. But no matter how hard I tried or what I did to get over him, I just couldn't do it.

All the while, my relationship with Carl was developing. He had me trying new things outside of my comfort zone and unafraid to do things I normally would be terrified to do. During that time, Will was becoming more jealous of my relationship with Carl. Around Halloween, Carl and I attended a midnight showing of _Rocky Horror Picture Show_, which really helped bring down some of my obsessive-compulsive behaviors. I told Will about this and he informed me that the Glee club was going to be putting on a version of their own, much to my delight. At first, I wasn't sure if the club could really do a show with such mature themes, but Will reassured me that they would rewrite some of the content to make it high school suitable. Throughout the course of the production, Will took over the role of Rocky and asked me to help him rehearse. I gladly complied and sang _Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a Touch Me_ with him in a classroom. But at the end of it, I realized how sexual the rehearsal had become and freaked out, running away after and telling Carl what had happened. This lead to a confrontation between Carl and Will and Will admitting that he had put the whole thing on just for me. He promised not to interfere with my relationship with Carl anymore.

Things settled down for a while between us until Sectionals that year. Will, like usual, invited me to go and I accepted, giving him the suggestion to give the lead vocals to someone aside from Rachel and Finn. He took my advice to heart and gave it to Quinn Fabray and Sam Evans for lead vocals and Brittany Pierce and Mike Change for lead dancing roles. In the end, I backed out of going to Sectionals with Will to stop further strife between him and my boyfriend Carl. While the Glee kids were competing at Sectionals, Carl and I took a trip to Las Vegas where we got married...which was something completely unplanned and unexpected. I dreaded coming back to McKinley and knowing that I would have to tell Will what happened. When I did, it broke my heart to see the look on his face. He congratulated me, but I knew deep down that it broke his heart to know that I was married to someone else.

That began the hell that was getting back to each other. My heart would break before Will would put it back together and give me his in return.

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**A/N: Thank you all so much for the positive review! Please keep reviewing as it gives me motivation to write this!**


	7. One Ending

_"If you love someone, set them free. If they return, they were always yours. If not, they never were."  
-Unkown_

In the weeks that followed my marriage to Carl, things remained distant between Will and myself. It hurt to face him in the hallways. Hurt to see him look at me, knowing that I belonged to someone else instead of him. The look in his eyes was sheer heartbreak and loneliness. And that tortured me worse than anything. The only other time I'd seen him like this was when he was with Terri, just after he'd learned that her pregnancy had been a fake. It was like everything he had ever wanted and needed had been taken from him. After the shock of the news initially hit, Will threw himself into the Glee club and worked as hard as he could, often times spending many hours in the school auditorium after hours. Even the kids noticed a change in him and many came to me, concerned that something was wrong with Mr. Schue. Even though I knew exactly what was wrong, I couldn't tell them. Some of them had an idea, particularly those who were perceptive to relationships like Quinn, Santana, and even Rachel, but it was never said aloud.

While Will dealt with his heartbreak, my marriage was already on the rocks right as it began. Carl didn't trust that I was marrying him for the right reasons and we argued over that quite a bit, with a lot of nights spent yelling at each other. We argued about the fact that I worked with Will and was in close contact with him on a daily basis, even though I promised Carl that I spent no extra time with Will outside of working hours. We didn't even eat lunch together anymore, which was something I wasn't used to. But that didn't assuage Carl's fears about me working together with Will, so we constantly fought about that. Even though he was a kind and outgoing man to everyone else, Carl was jealous and had a mean streak I didn't know about until _after_ we married. Often times, he forbade me from even talking to Will at work because of previous incidents that had happened, all of which I had been honest and open with him about. I also still had my issues with intimacy because of my mysophobia, which was why we still lived in separate homes and had not consummated our marriage either, which he was beginning to press by the time we'd been married around a month.

I often times cried myself to sleep at night because I knew that I wasn't normal. My marriage wasn't how it was supposed to be and I was miserable. I thought that marrying Carl would be the right thing to do since our relationship was so easy-going and he was really helping me overcome some of my obsessive-compulsive problems as well as mysophobia, but in the few weeks following the wedding...I realized that I was wrong. There was no way that I could go through with sleeping with Carl when I still loved Will and my heart was broken from hurting him. But I was married. I was married and in a relationship with someone else that wasn't Will, so I had to keep my mind off of him, which was hard to do when I saw him everyday and saw what my marriage had done. At the same time I felt guilty because I couldn't give myself fully in my marriage to the man I married, so I was conflicted.

My marriage to Carl didn't last very long though...which was my fault. Two months after our Vegas wedding, I went to Carl's place to ask him about fixing something at my place that was breaking down and needed some repair. I used my hide-a-key to get into his place, like usual, and walked into a scene that I never wanted to see. My husband was naked, on the couch, with another woman. I was so mortified and completely shocked that I screamed and ran out of the house, completely not even caring about what I had just come over for. Carl threw on clothes and ran after me, trying to explain that he was sorry. When I turned around and confronted him, asking him how long it had been going on and why he would do such a thing to me, knowing how much I had worked to even get to the point we were at, he told me that it was because _I _couldn't sleep with him that he turned elsewhere. I was so infuriated that I slapped him and told him that he knew what he was getting himself into when he married me...knowing that I had problems with intimacy. Needless to say, I filed for an annulment within a week after that since we had not consummated the marriage nor had we moved in together.

Since my marriage had failed, I recoiled back to where I was before I married Carl...just as scared of germs as I was before. I didn't want to face the world, much less Will after filing the annullment papers. During work, I still kept to myself and did my job as kids came into my office for guidance, but I in no way sought out Will. I wanted to wallow in my shame and misery for a while before facing him again. Of course, like all work places, gossip got around fast that I was no longer married...mostly by Sue's doing. She sent a memo to Will's box in the office that apparently read "Bambi is no longer married...here's your chance Schuester. Don't be a pansy now." Not entirely sure of the wording exactly, but you get the picture.

However much I loved Will at that point, I still wasn't ready to give my heart to him just yet. There was so much that we needed to work through and understand about each other before I could trust him again. But love is worth the fight, right? I don't know where I heard this quote before, but it really sticks out to me...

_"You can close your eyes to things you don't want to see, but you can't close your heart to things you don't want to feel."_

I learned that lesson over and over again.

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A/N: I truly appreciate all the positive reviews from this and hope that it keeps you entertained! Reviews are greatly appreciated and welcomed!**


	8. Second First Date

_"It's hard to tell your mind to stop loving someone if your heart still does."  
-Unknown_

As a counselor, I know that there are things in our minds that we cannot control. Impulses and urges that take over our rational minds and make us sort of...animals in a way. Instinctive and uncontrollable. But, it is our ability to see those instincts and understand them before they take us over completely that separates us from the animals. Yet, sometimes we don't catch them fast enough and they take over our minds. One such thing is our hearts. Not the real, beating organ in our chests but the thing that makes you _feel_ emotions and intimacy with another person. This part of ourselves is uncontrollable, irrational, and often times...a little stupid. I consider mine rather stupid for falling in love with a married man in the first place, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Who was I to question that?

Everything fell apart after my failed marriage to Carl Howell. I was back at square one with my problems and terrified of the world all over again. All of the hard work I had put into getting better, first for Will, and then for Carl was shot. I pulled back and didn't really respond to much of anything for a while, keeping to myself like before and doing my job from day to day. Will respected the space I needed and didn't press anything, but instead only encouraged me. He told me that if I needed counseling again, he knew someone who could help and I agreed to it. I wanted to get better. Desperately wanted to not feel like a freak every time I had to incessantly clean something. I wanted to be able to give myself to a man and not feel dirty after we did it for the first time. But, most of all, I just wanted to be normal. For myself. And, deep down, I wanted to get better for Will because I still loved him.

After a few weeks of counseling, I took a leap of faith and began talking to Will again. We started off slow, sticking to just having lunch together at school during the week. It was awkward and a little off at first, like it had been during the first time we ever ate together. The weirdness faded soon enough and we were like old friends that had never left each other. We talked about the Glee kids, teaching, and a little about our lives. It seemed so easy to slip back into that familiarity with him, but I had to remind myself to take it slow unless I wanted to fall right back into the trap Will and I fell into before in taking our relationship too far before I was ready. It was easy to talk to him though and I felt like my therapy was really helping...I even stopped wearing those plastic gloves at lunch and was able to not clean my grapes individually before I ate them. That, along with only taking one shower a day, was huge progress for me. I was beginning to see the real progress I'd been seeing before, even down to eating my sandwiches with crusts again.

The week after Valentine's Day, Will asked me on a real date. Unlike before, I wasn't scared when I accepted. Instead, I felt confident about going out with him this time. Although, like every other human girl in the world, I obsessed over what to wear, how to do my hair and makeup, and what was going to happen on the date. I called my mother and told her that I was going on a date with Will and she encouraged me to be myself, saying that Will knew me well enough not to care if I was a little neurotic. I knew this from previous experience and him telling me over and over again that he loved me the way I was. But, how I was wasn't normal...I didn't want Will to settle for my crazy the way he had settled in his first marriage for Terri's neurotic, controlling behavior. A relationship was about give and take, not all giving or all taking...which is what happened with Will's marriage to Terri. He was doing all the giving and she had been taking from him for years and years. Even down to taking the one thing he truly wanted, to be a father, from him. I could never be so selfish as to take that from the person I loved.

When the night of our date arrived, I was nervous and slightly panicked by the time Will came to pick me up around seven. But seeing him at my door, for the first time in months, was a comforting sight I welcomed gladly. We went over to his place, just like we did on our very first date. Only this time, the pressure wasn't as bad as it was that first time. He made me dinner, mindful of my sensitivity to dairy, and we danced to a new song. It was a Michael Buble one called _You and I_ that fit us a lot better than the other song did. I fell in love with it right away and it became our song, which no one else in our lives could claim was theirs with Will or myself. After dancing for a while, we settled onto the couch and watched a movie that wasn't _Armageddon _or anything similar. He actually picked out _You've Got Mail_ all on his own, which I was impressed with. At the end of the night, he took me home and gave me a kiss, no pressure or strings attached. After he'd left, I shut the door and knew that things would never be the same again...the kiss hadn't freaked me out or repulsed me in any way. In fact, I wanted to kiss him again.

And over the next couple months, Will and I embarked on our second chance for a relationship. I could have never planned for what happened next...but I'm glad it did.

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A/N: Thank you all so much for the reviews! I'm enjoying writing this and hope to hear more from you all!**


	9. White Roses

_"To the world, you may be one person. But to one person, you may be the world."  
-Unknown_

This concept is one that is a little harder to grasp with reality for some people. You might ask, "How can you be the whole world to one person?" Allow me to explain. When you love someone, everyone else in the world ceases to exist for you except for that person. You don't feel attracted to anyone else the way you feel attracted to them. And if they love you in return, you are their whole world. For me, that person was Will. No matter what I did to forget him, even as far as getting married to another man, it didn't matter. I loved Will. And no other relationship could take the place of what I felt for him in my heart. To the rest of the world and West McKinley High School, he was just one person and teacher. But to me, he was my entire world.

Will and I settled into a comfortable routine of dating after that second first date, which was both wonderful and new for me. Dating Will was not something I was new at, but a successful relationship was the new part. We spent a lot of nights just hanging out at his place or mine, watching movies, and cooking dinner. Sometimes we'd go out to Breadstix, but more often than not we were homebodies that just enjoyed each others' company. It was wonderful and perfect for me, especially as I continued to seek help for my problems. Will was very supportive and started coming to counseling with me, at my request, to learn ways to help me out in the outside world. My therapist commented on the fact that Will was so willing to help me and Will replied that he would do anything for the woman he loved. That was something that really stuck with me as I continued to work through my OCD.

Around the end of the year, Will started to act strange. He was canceling dates, which he usually never did. But I figured it was the stress of Regionals bearing down on him and the Glee club needing to perform well or be disbanded after this year. That was Figgins' condition from the previous year, but I knew that Sue wouldn't save the Glee club twice after all she and Will had done to each other over the school year. So, I didn't hold it too hard on Will because I knew what kind of pressure he was under, but after Regionals were over and New Directions placed, I wanted a little attention as his girlfriend. Call me crazy, if you will, but after not seeing my boyfriend for a while...I was a little desperate for alone time, away from school and away from the kids we worked with day in and day out with Glee and the students I counseled. Will agreed without question to me wanting time together, but told me to meet him in the choir room one afternoon after school rather than our usual date nights. I was a little confused, but went along with the plan.

When I arrived, I was surprised to find only Rachel Berry standing there. I was slightly confused and a little unsure of what was happening, but Rachel assured me that this was part of a plan...so I went with it. She presented me with a single white rose with a note attached that I pulled off and read.

_I love the way you support me in all of my dreams, even if they're crazy. But my greatest dreams start with these kids that live in the choir room each day. Glee has given me a lot, but the best thing it's brought me is you. Had I not took over Glee club, I might not have gotten to know you and fall in love with you. Come to the place where Glee shines the brightest...Rachel will lead the way._

After reading the note, I looked at Rachel and nodded. She lead me through the halls to the auditorium, opening the door for me. I didn't know what was happening, but it was all so mysterious. I vaguely remember feeling like I was going through this little scavenger hunt, hoping to find out what this was all about at the end. When we arrived, Noah and Finn were sitting on stools on stage. Finn was holding another white rose while Noah had a card waiting for me. I took both and opened the card to another note from Will.

_Through every show, performance, and even just rehearsals, you have been one of the biggest supporters and fans of Glee club. These kids love and appreciate you, as do I. Without you Emma, we lose our biggest fan. Your next stop is the place where we first kissed...Puck and Finn will take you there._

At this point, I was utterly speechless. No one had ever done something so kind for me...so sweet. Holding the roses and notes in my hands, I shakily walked out of the auditorium with Noah and Puck, leaving Rachel behind. I remember feeling this little feeling in the pit of my stomach like I was going to remember this adventure for the rest of my life. (Little did I know...) Walking down the hall, I saw the place at the end near the windows where Will had given me the first kiss of our relationship. I flashed back to that moment when he had been running after me since I was leaving. In that moment, I realized just how much I loved him then, and I was remembering it as I walked toward that place. Artie Abrams and Tina Cohen-Chang were waiting for me. As before, they had a rose and card for me. I took each and opened the card.

_The day I first kissed you was one of the best in my life. It woke me up to the realization that I was in love with you and wanted you in my life as something more than a friend. Since then, we've come through our struggles and trials on both sides, but I know how lucky I am to have you in my life as my friend and love of my life. Now go to the classroom where we rehearsed for Rocky Horror (yes, that one). Artie and Tina can take you there._

By this time, I was honestly wondering what Will had planned. He had never done anything like this before...and it excited me while terrifying me at the same time. I wasn't used to being lead around by teenagers, who were obviously in cohorts with my boyfriend. But at the same time, this was a thrilling experience for me. Romance was never lost on a romantic like myself and I loved the roses and notes written by Will. For years I had dreamed of finding a man like him to sweep me off my feet and accept that I had problems with messes, but I never expected to really find that man. And then Will came into my life. I thought about that as I followed Artie and Tina to the classroom, opening the door to find Quinn Fabray and Mercedes Jones waiting for me. Like always, a rose and card in hand. I quickly opened the next card and read more.

_What I love most about you Emma, is that you are you. There are times when you are completely unpredictable and adorable, like our Rocky Horror moment, and other times when I know exactly what you're going to do and it's still adorable. I love your red hair and big brown eyes that I can never say no to. Your "problems" don't bother me because I love you for who you are. No matter what, you will always be the same sweet, wonderful, and beautiful woman I fell in love with. Your last stop is my apartment...I'll be waiting._

When I finished reading that note, I had tears in my eyes. Quinn and Mercedes could tell that whatever was in that note was beautiful and smiled at me. I took all the roses he had left for me, along with the notes, and ran out to my car. I got in and immediately drove to Will's apartment with the brightest smile on my face that I could manage without hurting myself. When I got there, I used the spare key I knew he always hid for me and came in. Almost immediately, I was taken back at the dimmed lights and a path lined with candles from the doorway into the living room, scattered with rose petals on the path. A breathless smile crossed my face as I walked the path into the living room where I found Will waiting for me. I couldn't believe all of this and felt my eyes filling with tears as he came closer to me, saying that he wanted to tell me something and pressed the play button on his CD player before singing.

_Another day_

_Without your smile_

_Another day just passes by_

_But now I know_

_How much it means_

_For you to stay_

_Right here with me_

_The time we spent apart will make our love grow stronger_

_But it hurt so bad I can't take it any longer_

_I wanna grow old with you_

_I wanna die lying in your arms_

_I wanna grow old with you_

_I wanna be looking in your eyes_

_I wanna be there for you_

_Sharing everything you do_

_I wanna grow old with you_

_A thousand miles between us now_

_It causes me to wonder how_

_Our love tonight remains so strong_

_It makes our risk right all along_

_The time we spent apart will make our love grow stronger_

_But it hurt so bad I can't take it any longer_

_I wanna grow old with you_

_I wanna die lying in your arms_

_I wanna grow old with you_

_I wanna be looking in your eyes_

_I wanna be there for you_

_Sharing everything you do_

_I wanna grow old with you_

_Things can come and go I know but_

_Baby I believe_

_Something's burning strong between us_

_Makes it clear to me_

_I wanna grow old with you_

_I wanna die lying in your arms_

_I wanna grow old with you_

_I wanna be looking in your eyes_

_I wanna be there for you_

_Sharing everything you do_

_I wanna grow old with you_

When he finished, I had tears streaming down my face. I remember feeling this overwhelming sense of love and being loved by the one person that meant the most to me in the world. My tears flowed down my cheeks as he finished singing and knelt down on one knee, pulled out a diamond ring, and said the words that I will forever remember by heart.

"Emma, from the first time I met you, I knew that you were special. Everything about you was kind and giving, from your time to the advice you give every day to not only the kids, but myself. You became my best friend when I needed one most and I know that there were times when we didn't treat each other the best, but I never want that to happen again. You are the woman I love with all of my heart and want to spend the rest of my life with. I told you once that you make a beautiful bride, but this time...I want you to be _my_ bride. Emma Pillsbury, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

I said yes, of course, and he put the ring on my finger before standing up and kissing me. It was the happiest moment of my life up until then. Will was my Prince Charming and I couldn't have asked for a better one.

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A/N: Thank you all so much for the reviews again! Please feel free to leave more as I do appreciate them! Song is called "I Wanna Grow Old With You" by Westlife, if you're wondering!**


	10. 10 Things I Love About You

_"If you love someone, don't put their name in a heart. Put it in a circle because a heart can be broken, but a circle goes on forever."  
-Unknown_

When you become engaged or married, you exchange a set of rings. One for him and usually two for yourself, a wedding and engagement ring. For years, I wondered what the purpose of engagement and wedding rings were. I never knew why they existed, other than a tradition that started many generations back and continued on down through generations. Were they just some arbitrary trinket that you wore on your left hand to prove that you were married to someone? Or was there some other deeper meaning that I was missing entirely? As it turns out, there was a deeper meaning that I missed. This quote helped me to understand something that I never would have otherwise. Wedding rings, as well as engagement rings, are circles. There is no end and no true beginning to them. They just keep going on and on. I didn't understand the concept of wedding rings, but now I definitely do.

Within a few days of Will's proposal, it was all over the school. Everyone knew by the end of the week that we were engaged, including Sue. Most everyone was supportive of our engagement, congratulating us and saying it was about time. Shannon Beiste was especially excited about it, saying that both of us were people that deserved to be happy. Before Will proposed, he'd gone to Figgins about it to be sure that nothing could interfere with our engagement and marriage...particularly named Sue Sylvester. After one failed engagement for me and a failed marriage for both of us, the last thing we wanted was for someone to step in where they didn't belong and ruin things for both of us. I wanted my wedding to Will to be the best day of our lives because we'd both come through so much to be together.

Telling my parents I was engaged to Will was probably the most nerve wrecking experience of my life. I had already gone through telling them I was married to Carl in a Vegas wedding, which didn't go over well. So when I called them to tell them I was engaged to Will, I was surprised to hear my mother squealing with delight on the other end and immediately start talking about wedding details. I didn't know this at the time, but Will had called my parents to ask for their blessing to marry me. He had an at-length discussion with my father about how he would _never _do the things Ken and Carl did to me and how he'd been in love with me all along. My father is not the sort of man to bend his will easily for many people, but for me, he did. There were nights I called my mother, crying because I was in love with Will and didn't know what to do. My mother had obviously told my father before Will called him that I was in love with him. And with my parents' blessing, the wedding madness began.

Since I had heard wonderful things about the wedding Kurt Hummel planned for his parents, I decided that I would ask him for his help planning mine and Will's. Kurt seemed more than happy to help me, making all kinds of suggestions. It was fun and a little hectic to plan though, given our date was so soon. Will and I planned for a June wedding, giving us just over a month to plan it. I knew I was crazy to think I could plan a wedding in a month, but I wanted to have it over and done with before something went wrong again. The last thing I wanted was for someone to come along and decide to mess things up for me and Will again. Everything about our life was good now and I didn't want to lose that. But, unlike my wedding to Ken and Carl, I didn't want to keep it a secret or hide it from the world. I wanted everyone to know that I was marrying Will and that he was mine.

Things went smoothly in the planning. Kurt helped me pick a new wedding dress that was incredibly gorgeous and very me. In all the planning, I knew that the one thing that mattered was that I married Will. Kurt was an amazing planner, helping me with all the details from the food to the music for the reception. I chose white roses as my flower, mostly because it's what Will used when he proposed to me. I coupled those with baby's breath for my own bouquet as well as the bridesmaids, which were Tina, Quinn, Rachel, Mercedes, and Santana. Will chose Finn, Puck, Artie, Sam, and Kurt as his groomsmen. The rest of the Glee kids were involved as well as ushers and other parts.

Everything was going perfectly until we hit a huge speed bump about a week before the wedding was supposed to take place. I was preparing to move my things in at Will's apartment when I came across something I didn't expect to find...lingerie. It was underneath his bed as I was cleaning out some of the boxes he kept under there. When I confronted him with it, he sighed deeply and knew where it came from. I was appalled that he would already cheat on me when we weren't even married. However, his explanation proved me wrong. He said that when he'd gotten the flu earlier in the year, while we were not together, his ex-wife had come over to take care of him and they had ended up sleeping together. While I was relieved that he hadn't cheated on me, I was a little irritated that he had slept with Terri again...after all she'd done to him. Our conversation turned into a huge fight that ended with me walking out of his apartment to go home to my condo. I was so angry that he had hidden that from me, not telling me that he and Terri had slept together. I was jealous...plain and simple.

That night I slept horribly, feeling guilty for yelling at Will. I tossed and turned all night, feeling like there was something I was missing. When I gave up on sleep around four in the morning, I decided to work on my vows for the wedding. I wasn't going to call off the whole thing just because of a spat Will and I were having. There was a big part of me that wanted to call him, but I knew that he was probably asleep. So I kept writing my vows, which actually turned into a long list of thing I loved about Will. I kept that list to remind myself when we fight of how much I actually love him. Even now, nearly four years after that night, I look at that list and know I was right with every one. The list reads...

_1. I love the way he makes me smile.  
2. I love the smile he gets when he's really happy about something.  
3. I love his voice when he sings.  
4. I love the way he puts the Glee kids first.  
5. I love how selfless he is.  
6. I love the way he sees past my OCD and mysophobia to who I am.  
7. I love how he makes me feel.  
8. I love that he is patient with me.  
9. I love when he dances.  
10. I love that he is completely in love with me, no matter who or what I am._

The next morning, Will and I made up. He hadn't slept much the previous night either, so we were both glad when we could clear the air from our fight. He apologized for not telling me sooner about Terri and I apologized for being so judgmental, especially considering we were not together at the time and I was dating someone else. From there, we went on getting ready for our wedding. It was a week away, but we had no idea how stressful a wedding really could get until that week from hell.

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A/N: Thank you for all the support! Please keep the reviews coming!**


	11. Bridge Over Troubled Waters

_"It's funny, most people can be around someone and then gradually begin to love them and never know exactly when it happened."  
-Unknown_

The irony of this statement is I can tell you exactly when I fell in love with Will. Most people who are around someone can't tell you this because they are around that person so much, but with my OCD, I am keen to details. The night we spent cleaning up the classroom together the previous year and he wiped chalk on my nose was the night I fell totally in love with him. He was one of those guys that you just couldn't help but fall for, but even more than that...he understood me. Will got that I wasn't normal. And that I needed someone who could understand my problems, have patience with me, and take things slowly. We jumped too quickly the first time we tried a relationship, but the second time around was much better than the first.

The week of our wedding finally came and we were in a frenzy to get things finalized. Kurt was spending hours of his own time over at my place, helping me with the final preparations. For someone as young as he was, he definitely had talent when it came to planning events like weddings. Everything from my dress to the china we were going to use at the reception was all beautiful and perfect, just like I dreamed it would be. Since I was a little girl, I had thought about this dream wedding and how it would be...and now it was really coming to life. I never wanted the gigantic, extravagant wedding that most girls dreamed about as children. Instead, I wanted something small and intimate...just our closest friends and family. Everyone in our families seemed to be excited about our wedding. Will's parents were glad that he was finally marrying someone that truly made him happy and could appreciate their son for the wonderful man he was. My parents were happy that their daughter was finally getting married...the right way, or so they said.

Will was spending time away from me, writing his vows, while I dealt with the tiny details that no one else would really notice aside from me. As the days began to draw nearer, I started to fall apart. I began to have flashbacks of being left at the altar by Ken and the Vegas wedding with Carl, both situations that I looked back on with regret. I loved Will with all of my heart and wanted nothing more than to make him happy, but my nerves were getting the best of me. What if he left me at the altar? Or worse...what if when he married me, he regretted it? Those two questions loomed over me, making my joy turn into a living hell. I obsessed over whether or not Will and I were making the right decision in getting married. While he knew about my OCD and mysophobia, did he really know what he was getting himself into? Granted, I was getting better, he would still have to deal with my little tendencies to freak out over messes. I didn't know if he would really want to deal with that for the rest of his life. I didn't even want to deal with it and I was the person who was living with it.

My fear and worry boiled over until it reached the melting point. I called Will a few nights before the wedding and told him I was canceling the whole thing. He was shocked and confused, saying that he was coming over to my place right away. When he showed up, I was in tears and pretty much falling apart at this point. He came righti n and took me in his arms, consoling me while I cried until I couldn't breathe. After that was over, he sat me down on the couch and let me explain my fears to him. Patiently, he listened while I poured my heart out to him and proceeded to calm me, saying that he wouldn't leave me at the altar or regret his decision to marry me ever. I told how worried I was about my problems becoming a daily hassle for him and he told me that nothing would ever stop him from loving me. By the end of our conversation, I could breathe easier and wasn't backing out of our wedding, which was relief to both himself and me. The last thing I really wanted was to lose the one man I had ever loved this way to something as stupid as my own crippling fears. His ability to make me see reason again and keep me calm in the worst of situations. Will was the only man able to do that with me.

Once I was calm and able to focus again, I rested my head against his chest and melted into his embrace. Before I met Will, I would have never allowed anyone to hold me that close without wanting to cringe and push them away. But with him, I craved that closeness. It was as though germs didn't exist when we were together and I was able to forget them for a while. Will was the only person I had ever felt this strongly for and would ever feel this way about. I knew that even then. And that night, two days before our wedding, we made love for the first time. _My _first time. It's something we kept private and between us because my parents still knew I was a virgin, but Will and I consider it special and intimate. He took his time and made sure I was okay every step of the way. And even though I was nervous and it did hurt, I wouldn't have changed a thing about how it happened. Afterward, I resisted the urge to immediately shower myself and Will picked up on this and suggested we shower together. Let me just say...showering with someone else, fantastic. I will never shower alone again if I can help it.

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**A/N: Thank you again so much for all the reviews! Please keep them coming and I will keep posting these chapters as fast as I write them!**


	12. I Do

_"Love is like playing the piano, first you must learn to play by the rules, then you forget the rules and play from your heart."  
-Unknown_

When I first started dating Will, I had never really had been in a real relationship before. And after him, I went through hell trying to figure out what my heart really wanted. But through the struggles and heartache I suffered with Carl, I learned that my heart couldn't be tricked into loving someone else when I still loved Will with every piece of my whole heart. I had learned the rules of love through falling for Will and I played by those rules, waiting until he was single before we were together the first time. But after everything that happened, the rules were out the window and I just followed my heart right back to the man I loved. From that moment on, I knew that there was nothing in the world that could take me from Will again...nothing that he and I could control anyways.

The day of our wedding finally arrived and I was more nervous than I had ever been before, but it was a good kind of nervous. Will had already reassured me from my previous fears, so I was just so excited to finally be bonded to the man I loved so much with all of my heart. The only thing I was nervous about was forgetting the vows I had written down. I wanted him to know how much I loved him and how amazing a man he was. Will was the one person I had ever trusted so much to give my heart, mind, body, and soul to share. From the moment I met him, I had never felt more alive or hopeful for the future. Nothing had ever made me feel that way before meeting him. And no one had ever made me feel so loved that I wanted to get outside my box of comfort to do things I never thought I would before, like kissing or singing a song I would have never sang in public with him. Will was my life water and there was nothing more that I wanted than to spend the rest of my life with him.

When everything was ready and I was dressed, my mother kissed my cheek before leaving to go sit down in the church. My father came in and kissed my cheek, telling me how much he loved me. I felt my hands beginning to sweat a little, something I hated, but I ignored it and focused on the fact that Will was waiting at the end of the aisle for me. The Glee girls went out and took their places and left me to walk down the aisle with my father. We walked down the hall to the entrance and I remember feeling this sense of anticipation as the doors opened and I saw Will for the first time, standing there in his suit, waiting for me. A smile crossed my lips as he looked at me with as much love in his eyes as I'd ever seen before. I could see how happy he was and it reflected in my own joy as I walked down the aisle toward him. When we reached the end, my father gave me away to Will and the ceremony started. I don't remember much from the ceremony itself, but I do remember two things. My vows. And his. I wrote mine down beforehand and recited them without flaw, as did he. We kept the copies we made and put them in our wedding book after all was said and done, so I stole them out of the book and decided to share them here.

Mine read:

_From the first time I saw you my first day in McKinley, I knew that there was something special about you. You were the first person to say hello to me and made me feel welcome in a place where I didn't know anyone. Over the following weeks, you befriended me and despite my problems with OCD and mysophobia, you did not turn away. Instead, you sought to help me with them and show me that there is so much more to life than living in fear. And through our trials and problems, we worked through them all to be together. You're my best friend Will. And there is no one else I would rather spend the rest of my life with than you. Because of that, I stand here today in front of our family and friends to say that I am yours. Forever and always._

Will's read:

_When we met, I was a different man. I was hiding behind the shadow of someone that I was clearly not. But you saw through that and to the man I truly was, encouraging me to follow my dreams when others were telling me not to. You believed in me and in the kids I was teaching, which meant the world to me. Through everything, you were my friend and in that time, I fell in love with an amazing woman. And though we've come through our fair share of struggles, we've made it happen because we are real. I never thought I'd find a best friend that I would fall in love with the way I fell in love with you, but I did. And I'm glad it happened. I love you with all my heart Emma and know that from this day on, I am forever yours. Faithfully._

Once we said our vows, the minister finished the ceremony and pronounced us married. That was the absolute best moment of my life as Will's lips touched mine and I knew that we were together forever. No more insecurities about being with him. It felt right and I knew that no one could tell me otherwise. We walked back down the aisle together as a married couple for the first time and I couldn't help but smile and keep my eyes on him. I was Emma Schuester now and that was a feeling that settled into my mind, making me smile even more. It was the beginning of our life together. Back then, I didn't know exactly what kind of adventures we would get into, but I'm glad I had Will with me.

We danced the night away at our reception, even though I knew that I couldn't dance to save my life. Will held me close though and made sure I never fell or embarrassed myself though. I couldn't help but fall in love with him every moment we were together and our reception was no exception. Afterward, we went to this amazing hotel that Will had picked out himself over an hour away since nothing in Lima was that great. Even though I didn't particularly like hotels to begin with, this one was an exception to that rule. The honeymoon suite was gorgeous, with rose petals everywhere and clean sheets. Will and I consummated our marriage many times that night...all of which I treasure as our special time together as a newly married couple. And after, when I felt the urge to shower because of my OCD, he went with me and made that shower even better.

I curled into his arms that night, glancing at our rings and felt safe in the knowledge that he would never leave me. When I fell asleep, I felt comfortable in his arms and loved the feeling of someone else next to me in the bed. From that night on, I could never sleep alone. We slept all night and left the next morning for our honeymoon in the Bahamas, which Will surprised me with. I asked him how we could afford it and he explained that both sets of our parents had come to him and contributed because they wanted to send us somewhere nice for our honeymoon. I was both shocked and so grateful to them for that. Our honeymoon was something I will never forget, though I won't go into the details to spare you all that. Needless to say, I felt _very_ married by the time we got home.

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A/N: Hey guys! I apologize for the lack of updates but I've had school and a musical production I've been a part of that is this weekend. But I thought you guys deserved an update since it'd been a while! Hope you like it. Please review!**


	13. Happy Life

_Baby mine, don't you cry.  
Baby mine, dry your eyes.  
Rest your head close to my heart,  
never to part,  
baby of mine.  
-Allison Krauss, "Baby of Mine" _

The first few weeks after Will and I were married were blissful. We settled into a new life fairly easily and I moved into his apartment with him after our honeymoon, which was a huge step for me aside from getting married. But I was excited about it and couldn't wait to start our life together as a married couple. Once we were moved in together, I made sure everything was in order and Will humored my behavior most of the time, especially when it came to cleaning. He, however, was _very_ good at distracting me otherwise. Being newlyweds, it was difficult to keep my hands off of him in the first place, but the fact that my husband was an affectionate, amazing lover made it next to impossible to do so.

By August, we were settled into our routine of getting up a decent hour and getting ready for the day, even though we weren't technically back in school yet. Saturdays, however, were our lazy days that we spent in bed, curled up together, talking about anything and everything. More often than not, we were not clothed at that point either, but that is something that is normal for newly married couples. I was enjoying our time together and couldn't wait to see what our lives would be like once school started again. Will and I agreed that we wouldn't tease each other during classes to the point where we needed each other, meaning no sexy texting like we had been when one of us was out of the house. That was a difficult one for both of us because the lack of self control when it came to being around one another, but we eventually reigned it in and got it under control.

School started in September, meaning we were back in a settled routine for sure of work and coming home in the evenings after Will finished with Glee rehearsals. School that year began as always, with a slew of students not knowing where to go, the usual teasing from the bullies, and the overachievers getting into all the right honors classes. My office was flooded with students seeking advice for things ranging from bullies to not knowing how to tell someone they were breaking up with them because the summer didn't go as planned. That whole first week back exhausted both Will and myself, but me even more so than usual. I started feeling under the weather during the second week, meaning I took more vitamins and made sure absolutely no germs came in contact with me. But when it didn't ease up after a few days, I went to a doctor and found out the most life changing news someone who had only been married a few months could hear...Will and I were _pregnant_.

I had absolutely no idea how to tell my husband that I was carrying his child at that point...other than outright telling him, which I didn't want to do. I wanted to make this special for him because I knew what Terri had done to him before with her fake pregnancy. But since I knew that my pregnancy was real and that I was carrying his child, I wanted him to be a part of it all. After coming home from the doctor that day, I set up a little something while he was at Glee rehearsal. Despite my urges to clean up the mess I made, I used rose petals to lead from the from door to our bedroom. I laid on our bed and waited for my husband to come home, nervous about what I would say to him to tell him that I was having our baby. That we had made a life together for real and that I wasn't pretending like his ex-wife had to keep him. I waited until I heard the door open, my nerves shaking. When he came back in the room, he had the sweetest smile on his face that I'll never forget as he asked what all the flowers were about.

Crawling to the end of our bed, the one where our child was most likely conceived, and stood in front of him on my knees. After greeting him with our usual kisses, I took his hand and put it on my stomach, telling him that inside me was a baby that we had made together. I will never forget that look of shock and surprise on his face, as well as the smile that came after as he kissed me and then my belly. I couldn't help but feel my eyes fill with tears that day as I knew how happy my husband was. I hadn't left him out of the miracle that was our child like Terri had before. We were relishing in the miracle of life that we had created. My due date was set for May of the following year, meaning that we would be new parents right around Regionals. While we were concerned for that fact, we were mostly overjoyed that we were expecting. I was more nervous than I would admit to Will at that point though, but that isn't something that I wanted him to know then. I wanted him to be happy and know that I wasn't faking a pregnancy. He was really going to be a father and that is what I was more focused on than my own fears.

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A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter! I hope you enjoy and please review!**


	14. Morning Sickness and Flutters

_"When you choose to have a child, you make a conscious decision to allow your heart to walk around outside of your body."  
-Unknown_

The first few weeks of my pregnancy were horrible as I had bouts of morning sickness and complete mood swings that kept my poor husband always on edge. There would be moments where I was totally fine one second and crying the next, which made poor Will feel like he'd done something wrong. I felt bad for him, but he was patient and loving in taking care of me, even when I was throwing up too. For someone who hated germs, vomiting at the drop of a hat was awful for me. I always felt like I was so dirty afterward and kept toothbrushes and mouthwash on hand constantly. Will was so patient and loving with me though, taking care of me and making sure that I was able to eat at least something I could keep down for my sake and the baby's as well. It was difficult to eat much of anything other than soups and crackers, especially when my morning sickness was at it's worst around my ninth and tenth week of pregnancy.

When the nausea and vomiting finally let up after the first trimester, I felt a sense of relief that I wasn't going to deal with it again for a while. As we went into the second trimester, I felt a lot better physically and emotionally. My body was changing in more obvious ways as I started to gain a little weight and my baby bump started to show. We informed Principal Figgins about the baby and that I would be taking maternity leave in May, meaning I would not return until after the summer was over. Will and I also chose to tell the Glee kids about our pregnancy right around the end of October since I was obviously starting to show. The kids were all so excited and happy for us, which was a relief to Will and I since they knew our due date as well. They were supportive of it and Rachel Berry, in her typical fashion, offered to help take over a lot of the duties of the club. Mercedes and Tina also offered to help out when Will needed it, meaning he could spend time with me preparing for the baby.

My second trimester was a lot better than my first. I felt good about myself and the little person growing inside of me, even if I was scared out of my mind about what kind of mother I would be. I loved my baby with all of my heart and wanted to share that with my husband. I let him touch my belly as it grew and talk to the baby all the time since Terri had denied him that because she was never pregnant in the first place. I never wanted to deny him that since we were in this together. He had helped put the baby inside of me, just as I was carrying it now until it was born. At night, I would pull my shirt up a little over my belly so he could see how it was growing and put his hand on the side. He would sing to the baby too, which was probably one of my favorite memories from my pregnancy.

Around eighteen weeks, I felt the baby flutter for the first time, which was a memorable moment I'll never forget. I was sitting in my office waiting on a student to come in for some counseling when I felt a slight movement in my stomach. For a moment, I passed it off as something else but when I felt it again a few minutes later, I knew that it was the baby by how it felt. It was like butterflies in my stomach, but stronger. In that instant, I got up from my desk and hurried down the hall to Will's classroom. He tried to feel it, but it was still too soon for him to be able to, but he could see the joy in my face and definitely felt it too, knowing that he would get to feel it soon enough too. (He actually started feeling the kicks around twenty-one weeks or so) We also learned around this time that we were carrying a little girl, so we were feeling a strong emotional bond to our daughter already. But we couldn't even begin to imagine what would come with parenthood...

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**A/N: I'm sooo sorry I haven't been able to update this recently...school projects have killed me this semester! But, summer is around the corner! Please review and make my day?**


	15. Birthday

_"A mother's love is instinctual, unconditional, and forever."  
-Unknown_

I will never forget the day I became a mother. It is something that I think about every single day as I look into my daughter's eyes. She is the personification of the love that I share with my husband, a living being brought into the world because two people loved each other. I see her sweet little blonde curls and big brown eyes and I know, without a doubt, that she is mine and Will's. The day she was born was probably one of the longest and most painful days of my life, but the pain and sleep depervation was all worth it when I look at her now and know how blessed I truly am to have her. For someone like me, having a child is a messy business that I didn't even want to think about five years ago, but all of that changed. It changed the moment I met Will and the moment I found out I was going to be a mother. Pregnancy has this way of changing you for the better and I couldn't even begin to imagine my life without my daughter now.

The day my daughter was born was like any other in the third trimester of my pregnancy. I felt swollen, my feet were puffy, and I hadn't slept the entire night before because the baby was twisting and wriggling in my pelvis. I was thirty-nine weeks pregnant, it was the end of April, and I was ready to pop. Because of my size and the fact that I no longer had the ability to balance myself very well, Will had forbade me from cleaning as much as I normally did, much to my horror and dismay. It irked me that I couldn't clean and scrub the kitchen from top to bottom and run my antibacterial cloths over every surface in the nursery one more time before the baby came, but Will made me promise I wouldn't because he didn't want me going into labor from the stress of everything. So, instead, I went to work every morning and came home in the afternoons to relax, just as Will instructed me to.

I had been sitting in my office most of the morning, working on some final paperwork for the SAT prep class that I usually taught over the summer. Since Will and I would have a newborn baby around that time, we decided that it would be best if I handed off that duty to someone else this year. One of the other teachers gladly offered to take it for me, so I was getting everything in order for her. Will was down the hall in his Spanish class, lecturing. I knew he'd been worrying about the set list for Regionals too, since that was just around the corner in two weeks. This was probably one of the most stressful times of the year for him, so I wanted to keep things as calm as possible both at home and work for him, which was working so far as our excitement was all about the baby. Will was so excited to be a father and I was so happy that I was the one giving this child to him.

The bell for lunch finally rang and I was getting up to head down to the teachers lounge to meet Will, like usual. I had stood up when I felt a small gush of water run between my legs. Immediately thinking I had wet myself, I blushed and looked down. My skirt was wet with a small puddle on the front and the back, from what I could see under my enormous belly. As I reached to steady myself against my desk, I felt my first contraction and almost doubled over from surprise. Thankfully, Mercedes happened to be passing my office and saw me before running down to the lounge to get Will. Everything started happening so fast as Will came running down the hall, panicked like any expectant father would be their first time. With the help of my husband and Finn, who had followed him, they got me to our car and we were able to drive to the hospital.

Once admitted, I began the very long process of labor and delivery. Will stayed by my side, comforting me and being my coach through contractions. I will not lie to you and say that this entire process was beautiful and wonderful because, frankly, it was not. I was sweating like a pig, crying from the pain I felt, and exposed every time a doctor came in to check my progress. It was like a circus show almost...and I felt like the main display. Let me be honest and say that having that area of your body on display for the world to see is not something that is comfortable, sanitary, or in the least bit not embarrassing. The only form of comfort I had was the epidural that I was allowed to have when I was finally half way through dilation. After that point, I didn't care what they did to me so long as I got the baby out of my body. I was exhausted, sore, and just wanted to hold my baby.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I was fully dilated and ready to push. Up until this point, I had thought that I had gone through the worst of the embarrassment, but I was dead wrong. When you push a baby from your body, everything from the waist down is exposed, and I mean everything. No one had seen me this naked, aside from Will, and the doctors who were never down in that area for more than a few moments for exams. But this...this was an hour and a half of agonizing pushing and exposure. I pushed until my body physically could not any longer and then some. Around this time, her head finally emerged and after one more push, a little body was placed on my stomach. My daughter.

_Emily Sophia Schuester_.

Tears were streaming down my face when I looked at my daughter for the first time. She was covered in blood and other things from the after birth, but I did not care. I could see she had Will's ears and my nose already. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she screamed, but I knew they would be the deep midnight blue that all newborns had. My baby was absolutely beautiful and perfect in every single way. I had worked so hard for her and she was finally here. Will had kissed me and was tearing up. This was the miracle he had waited so long for and been robbed of once before, but she was finally here. We were parents. I had never felt more emotional or drained in my life, but those first few moments of my daughter's life will forever be engrained in my mind. I had brought a life into the world. A life I created with my husband out of love.

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**A/N: Thank you all for your support thus far! I hope you're enjoying the blog and let me know what you think in a review! :)**


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